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I attended IgniteNYC to try to understand the state of tech in NYC. What I found out instead was the state of art in NYC. Not the state of the art, but how artists are using technology for their projects. Many of the people here were discussing how their art interacted with technology. It’s 2009 and it seems that the use of Web 2.0 technology and data visualization techniques has become de rigeur for artists.
The use of imagery on the Internet, the manipulation and remixes inherent in such a febrile Web culture as well as the the art inherent in data itself were common threads through many of the discussions. We are talking about an obsession and DIY attitude with data, both its creation and reuse, as the very definition of what I call nerdism. As a long-standing member of the nerd class (i.e. you are reading the writings of a high school Computer Club president), it’s very satisfying to watch nerdism become the default intellectual stance for artists and hipsters. I predict that over time that successful nonprofits will also adopt nerdism as an intellectual stance too. Ultimately, we will have hip and cool nonprofits obsessing over their beautiful data visualizations and discussing their work in venues at IgniteNYC. Of course, it hasn’t happened yet but the day will come when some nonprofit 2.0 ED will present on the stage at an IgniteNYC and just royally geeks out over their cool heatmap overlay over metropolitan New York.
To find more links and other information about #ignitenyc, check out my live tweets during the event and everyone else who tweeted about it..
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The IgniteNYC event was also a big mixer for 20-40 somethings who would benefit from hearing speakers talking about things such as "What to do if your apartment catches on fire (and what to do before the next fire)" and "Unemployment 101".
Thankfully, the event was upbeat and fun – I would say there was only one speaker who was a sincere (and slightly scary) Denny Downer.
I'm glad I made it into the demographic. I felt bad for the augmented reality guy, Noah Zerkin, since it was clear not many people in the audience knew what he was talking about. AR is the future — but many of the people there were future consumers of AR, not exactly the right audience.
Awww, don't feel bad for me, Allan. It was the wrong crowd, at the wrong hour, and at the wrong level of inebriation for my talk. Let's just say that I put in the talk proposal on a whim about an hour before the submission deadline (less than a week before), and I may have gotten a little too ambitious for the format. C'est la vie. I had fun, so no regrets
And Christina, are you referring to Karen Sandler? Hers was a hard talk to laugh at, but completely mind-blowing.
Noah, AR is mindblowing and it has a potentially bigger effect on us than some of the other pretender techs out there. And your work is really interesting, now if we can just take that and make it work for nonprofits, I think it would be a hell of a way to deliver the messages that nonprofits have to a jaded audience.
Oh, I'm not going to name names, Noah! But no, it was a dude. Actually, that's kind of all I remember now… I loved Karen's talk, "Unchain my Heart"! It was personal, touching, smart and right up the crowd's alley re: IP and technology.
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